Portland, Ore. mayor headed for foreclosure?

Ahh, Mayor Sam Adams. We Portlanders so want to love you, with your yellow bike helmet and your openly gay self-ness. You reflect all that is Portland, bike-geeky and weird, weird, weird.

Lately, however, you reflect us a little too well. Like one of those magnifying mirrors that lets you see your pores and your pimples and your worry lines in horrifying scale. First there was the teen sex scandal, in which you probably didn't have sex with a teenager (he was 18 before y'all hooked up), but you definitely lied, and made us wince at the headlines the morning of Obama's inauguration. That was kind of icky.Then you got in a fender-bender in your enormous GMC pickup (which was subsequently declared totaled by your insurance company, leaving you car-less and free to pledge not to drive for a month -- thanks for being green, Mr. Mayor!).

But seriously, how did you get to be five months behind on your mortgage? And now your default notice is all over the state's foreclosure website. Your mortgage, at only $959.81, is less than mine; you bought your house at a bargain for $130,000 in 2003 (nice work, but). It's clear you haven't paid a dime of your $118,144 annual salary toward your mortgage since the big sex scandal broke, and you started paying for substantial legal fees. But couldn't you have prioritized just a touch better? It's clear you're setting the example for us: live raucously. Lose big. Cover your behind. And forget about the little stuff, the mortgage payments, to look both ways before proceeding across an intersection, until your name is being called out at an auction on the steps of the Multnomah County Courthouse.

Here's a hint from a constituent who writes about personal finance and used to be proud of you: you've got to take care of your financial basics first, before you go out and party with the kids, yes, before you hire a pricey attorney to clear your name. We love to proclaim our weirdness, but a homeless, triply-disgraced mayor is just a little too weird for us.